Review of "Why Women Mean Business." The book aims to convince senior managers that they can reap enormous competitive advantage from focusing on women both as a source of talent and leadership and as a market for their products and services.

Fully integrating women into both the workplace and the marketplace can yield a significant return—what can be called the Gender Dividend. Much like the dividends that public corporations pay to shareholders, the Gender Dividend is a steady benefit that is earned by making wise, balanced investments in developing women as workers and potential leaders as well as understanding women as consumers and their impact on the economy and the bottom line. Done right, the Gender Dividend should be reflected in increased sales, expanded markets, and improved recruitment and retention of a key talent segment.

The current financial crisis presents a real need to challenge ourselves and to rethink the way we do things. We need to draw on the widest range of talent. The vast economic potential of women as an economic force has yet to be realized. An extensive body of research shows that women make significant and proven contributions to business and economic growth. Now is the time to realize and harness the positive effect that women’s economic empowerment and leadership can have on the global economy.

As a market, women represent an opportunity bigger than China and India combined. They control $20 trillion in consumer spending, and that figure could reach $28 trillion in the next five years. BCG surveyed more than 12,000 women from a variety of geographies, income levels, and walks of life about their education, finances, homes, jobs, activities, interests, relationships, hopes, and fears, as well as their shopping behaviors and spending patterns. In this article, Silverstein and Sayre, two of the firm’s partners, review highlights of the findings and explain the biggest opportunities. While any business would be wise to target female consumers, they say, the greatest potential lies in six industries: food, fitness, beauty, apparel, health care, and financial services.

Everyone knows, or has long suspected, that the purse strings are held by women. It's oft repeated that they make 85% of the buying decisions or are the chief purchasing officers of their households. The difference today — one that has enormous consequences across global economies — is that women are also the earners.

The Women and Wealth Research Survey 2009 looks at the unique group of women who have lived through, and pioneered, the changing social roles thatwealthy women fill. It asks how societal changes have affected women working in the family business, how they have been influenced by their parents and their children and how these women have forged a place for themselves within the business. It looks at the role wealth plays in the lives of affluent women, what they want to achieve for themselves and how they see their legacy.

Capgemini and Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management are pleased to present the 2011 World Wealth Report. Our two firms have been working together for more than 20 years to study the macroeconomic and other factors that drive wealth creation and to better understand the key trends that affect high net worth individuals (HNWIs) around the globe.

The wealth gap between younger and older Americans has stretched to the widest on record, worsened by a prolonged economic downturn that has wiped out job opportunities for young adults and saddled them with housing and college debt.

The typical U.S. household headed by a person age 65 or older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35, according to an analysis of census data being released today.

As wealth management clients, women are both significant and undervalued. They control about 27 percent of the world’s wealth (meaning that they decide where the assets are invested), yet more than half of the women we surveyed feel that wealth managers could do a better job of meeting the needs of female clients—and nearly a quarter think that wealth managers could significantly improve how they serve women.

Never before have wealth creation, economic risk and politics been so closely intertwined with the performance of prime residential and commercial property markets. Drawing on insight from Knight Frank, Citi Private Bank and other leading commentators, The Wealth Report 2012 pulls together all these strands and explains their connections and likely implications.

Using exclusive data and survey results, we uncover how the wealth being generated by the world’s fastest growing economies is an integral part of the equation, but also discover that economic growth alone is not enough to create cities considered genuinely important by the world’s wealthiest people.

The overall financial wealth of high net worth individuals (HNWI1) declined across all regions in 2011, with the exception of the Middle East, according to the World Wealth Report 2012, released today by Capgemini and its new partner, RBC Wealth Management. The 1.7 percent decline is the first since the 2008 world economic crisis, a year in which HNWI global wealth declined by 19.5 percent.

The 16th annual World Wealth Report finds that the number of HNWIs in Asia-Pacific expanded 1.6 percent to 3.37 million in 2011, making Asia-Pacific the largest HNWI region for the first time, surpassing North America’s HNWI population of 3.35 million. North America remained the largest region for HNWI wealth at US$11.4 trillion compared to US$10.7 trillion in the Asia-Pacific region.

Women face tough challenges when preparing for retirement. Women live longer, have lower earnings, and are more likely to outlive some sources of retirement income than men. These challenges suggest that women have to prepare even more carefully to ensure that they can live comfortably during retirement.
This Fact Sheet highlights important differences between men and women in regard to retirement preparedness. Women live longer than men and will spend more years in retirement. In addition, for various reasons such as caregiving, women will spend more time out of the workforce. The lower labor force attachment results in fewer women with pensions and lower earnings which, in turn, result in lower Social Security benefits and higher poverty rates at older ages.

This week in Istanbul 13 European countries signed a Council of Europe convention on combating violence against women. All 47 members were urged to comply. Turkey pushed hard for the convention, which calls for hotlines, shelters and legal aid for abused women.

This assessment is to determine the effectiveness of the policies, training, and procedures of the academy with respect to sexual harassment and assault involving academy personnel. In APYs beginning in even-numbered years (e.g., APY 10-11), the Report is comprised of the Department’s assessment, statistical data on sexual assault, and results of focus groups of cadets and midshipmen conducted by the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC).

As millions rose up last year demanding justice, women were on the front lines and behind the headlines pushing to advance human rights. Global Fund for Women celebrates International Women’s Day with ten victories won by our grantee partners in 2011. From securing bodily rights to delivering justice to rape survivors, women are indeed ushering in peace and justice for all.

Policies combating violence against women vary widely from one country to the next. Studies trying to account for these differences have pointed to a variety of cultural, economic, and political factors. But relatively little is known about how the activities of civil society drive progress on this human rights issue.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Office on Women’s Health (OWH), supports the Prevention of Violence Against Women and Girls Initiative to respond to the problem of violence against women and girls in the United States. Through this nationwide Initiative, the Regional Offices on Women’s Health funded community level projects to conduct activities and events that educate and bring awareness to aspects of violence against women and girls. These Regional OWH project emphasize that violence encompasses intimate partner violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, sexual abuse, stalking, emotional and verbal abuse; as well as teen violence, bullying, human trafficking, and other forms of trauma or abuse. Violence against women and girls is perpetrated in all types of personal and family relationships and crosses economic, educational, cultural, racial, age, and religious lines.

This report is based on extensive interviews in Afghanistan with 58 women and girls in
three women’s prisons and three juvenile rehabilitation centers, as well as with civil
society members, prison wardens, prosecutors, government officials, shelter providers,
women’s rights activists, government advisors, and legal and women’s rights experts. It
focuses on the plight of women and girls charged with the moral crimes of “running away”
and zina. The crime of “running away” is nowhere to be found in the Afghan Penal Code.
The crime of zina under Afghan law is contrary to Afghanistan’s international legal
obligations. Criminal cases are often brought on dubious accusations, determined by
problematic confessions, and often result in long prison terms for women and girls. The
report highlights almost three dozen cases of women punished for these “crimes,” and
examines the frequently negative role that police, prosecutors, and judges have played in
punishing women and girls perceived to have committed them.

Sexual harassment has long been an unfortunate part of
the climate in middle and high schools in the United
States. Often considered a kind of bullying, sexual harassment by definition involves sex and gender and therefore
warrants separate attention. The legal definition of sexual
harassment also differentiates it from bullying.
Based on a nationally representative survey of 1,965 students in grades 7–12 conducted in May and June 2011,
Crossing the Line: Sexual Harassment at School provides
fresh evidence about students’ experiences with sexual
harassment, including being harassed, harassing someone
else, or witnessing harassment. The survey asked students
to share their reactions to their experience with sexual
harassment and its impact on them. It also asked them
about their ideas for how schools can respond to and
prevent sexual harassment.